4.1 PTR

[Malthrax]

That'd be a later change to make to reduce queue times however: It's going to be a lot of effort to design and balance properly. The goodie bag solution Blizzard is trying now is much simpler to make. Just check what's rare, offer goodie bag to people wanting to finish dungeons with that spec.

I have a tingly feeling that's NOT how its been implemented...


Nothing in the description, so far, explicitly states that "you must finish the instance as the role you initially queued for."

The announcement says:
- queue for the in-demand role
- finish the instance

There's an ever-so-slight disconnect; hopefully its only due to an incomplete description.

[Aubade]

That'd be a later change to make to reduce queue times however: It's going to be a lot of effort to design and balance properly. The goodie bag solution Blizzard is trying now is much simpler to make. Just check what's rare, offer goodie bag to people wanting to finish dungeons with that spec.

I have a tingly feeling that's NOT how its been implemented...


Nothing in the description, so far, explicitly states that "you must finish the instance as the role you initially queued for."

The announcement says:
- queue for the in-demand role
- finish the instance

There's an ever-so-slight disconnect; hopefully its only due to an incomplete description.

I really don't understand the point you're trying to make.

the DPS warrior that's dumb enough to Q as a tank?

He's going to get kicked or the rest of the group is going to leave.

So what's your point?

[fuzzygeek]

hey,

Every tank-capable toon has a DPS offspec.
Every heal-capable toon has a DPS offspec.

False!

Every tank-capable CLASS has a DPS offspec.
Every heal-capable CLASS has a DPS offspec.

Fixed!

I know a few Raider that have dual Tankspeccs, a threat-centric and a survival-centric specc.

This. All my tanks are dual-prot; my priest is dual-disc. DPS bores me to tears.

I still think the DPS/Driver is the best option. It is unfortunate that someone would have to queue to do something other than play their class, but that's why it should be optional. And it's not like Bizz isn't above forcing that to be done -- ever done a DM where none of the DPS can understand the thresher's "1 1 2" rotation?

[Lieris]

Every tank-capable toon has a DPS offspec.
Every heal-capable toon has a DPS offspec.

No.

[knaughty]

Every tank-capable toon has a DPS offspec.
Every heal-capable toon has a DPS offspec.

No.

Lieris is correct.

I'm prot-pve/prot-pvp. I've been double-prot-pve in the past when there was move fat in the prot tree. Many of our priests have been disc/holy.

Several of the guild healers are currently specced "heal-pve/heal-pvp".

The 0-0-5 idea is interesting, but the amount of work required to end up with what will probably be a vehicle instance that people will get bored of pretty fast is unlikely to be time well spend on Blizzard's part.

[Koatanga]

I don't think it has to be a vehicle instance. It just needs NPC tanks and/or healers. The quest where you join Wrynn on a raid to Undercity is an example - just increase the DPS requirement. Imagine Durnholde where Thrall tanks for you.

Of course that just boils down to "you must have x aggregate DPS to complete this encounter", because otherwise you run into balance issues with CC and such...

Perhaps give them some fire to stay out of, or ice blocks to break people out of or some such mechanic that is more about responding to events than pure DPS.

[Aanar]

Yeah, the more I think about a 0-0-5 dungeon, the more I doubt the gameplay would work well. A whole instance like toc:faction champs would be irritating (though maybe it would make less people queue as dps!) for those of us that don't like pvp. Vehicles are dull after the third time. Using an npc tank and npc healer puts too much importance on how well they're scripted. Too powerful and you have a boring ez mode. Too sucky and dps will insta-drop if they get it as their random and they'll have more complaints on the message boards about it than they have now about dps queue times.

Anyone remember the quest in grizzly hills where you could ask the druid to go as bear or resto? (not sure if there was a dps option). Maybe a dungeon that gave you an npc to fill in for a role wouldn't be so bad. I could see a dungeon like CoT: Strat working if Arthas "respecced" to tank/heal/dps depending (but his character doesn't really fit them all). That would resolve the issue people bring up about never getting to do a 0-0-5 if they're prot/pvp prot, etc. And it would fit better with blizzard's model of only adding 2-3 dungeons at a time. If one of them had the flexibility of being 1-1-3 + npc dps, 0-1-4 + npc tank, or 1-0-3 + npc healer, it would add a lot of flexibility to the system.

It would let you accomodate anywhere between 60% (of total # people queing) to 80% dps, 0% to 20% tanks, and 0% to 20% healers instead of the current lock of needing exactly 20% tanks, 20% healers, and 60% dps. It would have it's limits, like if you somehow had 25% queing as healer only, you'd be back to them having a queue time.

It would also avoid the dilemna of whether you'd let 5 dps queue together so they'd automaticlaly get the one 0-0-5 out of the pool of dungeons.

I think it might be fun if the next X-pac shipped with dungeons designed for a variety of comps. Sure have a couple 1-1-3s, but throw in some 1-1-6, 1-1-8, 2-3-5, 2-2-6, 1-2-7, etc. to spice things up a little for your daily random (or weekly 7x in 4.1+).

[Koatanga]

The flex option is not a bad idea, but I think it would be difficult to implement. The NPC healer, for instance, would determine the exact strength of tank the fight could support (plus or minus RNG). Any less, and the HPS would not counter incoming damage. Any more, and the instance is ez-mode again.

Theoretically that would be balanced around a 329-ilvl tank, which is entry-level for heroics, which would make it auto-win for higher geared tanks. The result is DPS would kick-on-sight any lesser geared tank, because they want ez-mode. They do that now, which discourages a lot of starting tanks and sends them back to queing as DPS to get tanking gear, which exacerbates the tank shortage and has DPS rolling need on tank gear which annoys tanks and again adds to the queue problem.

I think it would actually be easier to implement a 0-0-5 or even an X-X-X encounter designed around people doing certain things at certain times, such as supporting an NPC assault where you have to click on shield generators and use some magic object to heal or resurrect people or just make it a stupid vehicle fight like Flame Leviathan or Occulus.

I still think the vehicle option is best, where a member of the group can hop into a tank bot and tank the instance. That could be implemented into every existing instance of any level just by having a rack of vehicles at the beginning that people could optionally use. In the queue, add a tick box for "vehicle-assist". By ticking that box, you agree to a faster queue, but also agree to run the missing-role bot should RNG decide it's your turn.

[lythac]

Theoretically that would be balanced around a 329-ilvl tank, which is entry-level for heroics, which would make it auto-win for higher geared tanks. The result is DPS would kick-on-sight any lesser geared tank, because they want ez-mode. They do that now, which discourages a lot of starting tanks and sends them back to queing as DPS to get tanking gear, which exacerbates the tank shortage and has DPS rolling need on tank gear which annoys tanks and again adds to the queue problem.

Balance the healer based off what average ilvl the tank is wearing.

tank healer

349 329 (minimum)
345 331
341 333
337 335
333 337
329 339

(crappy DPS can die in fire with a higher level tank)

[Aanar]

You'd probably want to have both an npc tank and npc healer scale off the group ilvl.

I don't think getting a group with an npc heler would be ez-mode even if hey were tuned a little "strong". Most deaths are because people stood in crap, pulled agro from the tank repedly, pulled extra packs, broke cc, tried to tank a whole pack that was designed to be cc'ed, etc. and not that the healer "messed up", although they do of course sometimes too.

When I tank the only real differecne I notice between a good ilvl 329 healer and a good ilvl 359 one is how much cc is needed and if mana breaks are needed or not.

The first few weeks of cata dungeons with my holy priest, yes there was a risk of the tank dying just do to dmg in > healing througput (like the pack of 2x ogres early in dm that aren't ccable and the tank got an unlucky streak and didn't bother to use a cd), but the only time that really happens now is when tanks try to skip cc on tougher packs (like the deeper packs of GB or even the first pack of HoO) w/o cooldowns or mess up on things like Oz in SC.

An npc healer would be a lot easier to script than a tank if you wanted them to play nice with cc pulls. Maybe put options in so when you can talk to him you can say, square means cc (so he wont' touch it until all that's left are mobs with cc marks).

[fuzzygeek]

The problem with NPCs and scripted events is taking control out of the hands of the player, which I've never seen done correctly. Sitting around waiting for portals in Black Morass, or Violet Hold? Stupid. Waiting for Thrall in OHB? Dumb. And so on and so forth.

[lythac]

The problem with NPCs and scripted events is taking control out of the hands of the player, which I've never seen done correctly.

Andorov didn't seem too bad tanking the Rajaxx encounter? The whole fight didn't seem too bad, but I guess they didn't remove total control.

Whilst not a solution for the Dungeon Finder it would be a nice to see a 5 man Heroic fight utilising a tanking NPC for a tank swapping/debuff dropping fight.

[Sabindeus]

The problem with NPCs and scripted events is taking control out of the hands of the player, which I've never seen done correctly.

Andorov didn't seem too bad tanking the Rajaxx encounter? The whole fight didn't seem too bad, but I guess they didn't remove total control.

Whilst not a solution for the Dungeon Finder it would be a nice to see a 5 man Heroic fight utilising a tanking NPC for a tank swapping/debuff dropping fight.

You still needed a tank for Rajaxx though.

[Fetzie]

The problem with NPCs and scripted events is taking control out of the hands of the player, which I've never seen done correctly.

Andorov didn't seem too bad tanking the Rajaxx encounter? The whole fight didn't seem too bad, but I guess they didn't remove total control.

Whilst not a solution for the Dungeon Finder it would be a nice to see a 5 man Heroic fight utilising a tanking NPC for a tank swapping/debuff dropping fight.

You still needed a tank for Rajaxx though.

You also got a bare minimum of healing to negate the thunderclap too (if you were honored or higher with cenarion)

[Mannstein]

What about an instance where the healer was a scripted healing...
Since the start of the combat, he healed 10k per second for 2minutes...
The more damage the tank needed the less heal the dps would receive...
And since the healer would og oom in 2minutes, you had to have some focused dps...
When each fight ended the "healer" would have to wait a few seconds to recover the time/mana.

That wait you could have a 1-0-4 composition...
I'm sure we could come up with a idea for 0-1-4 (no tank) composition..
But to be honest the 0-0-5 doesn't look as "nice"